POLICE investigating the murder of schoolgirl Alice Gross have confirmed that a body found in a park IS that of chief suspect Arnis Zalkalns.

The corpse of the 41-year-old Latvian labourer was discovered in dense woods in Boston Manor Park, Brentford, just a five minutes drive from the canal towpath where 14-year-old Alice was last seen more than a month ago.

The body was identified as that of Zalkalns in a post-mortem examination conducted today.

The Metropolitan Police said the cause of death is consistent with hanging and that there is no evidence of any third party involvement.

Zalkalns' body was “badly decomposed”– raising the possibility that he died weeks ago, shortly after killing the schoolgirl as she walked home.

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Labour MP Stephen Pound said the discovery left police chiefs with “serious questions to answer” over the way the massive hunt – the biggest since the 7/7 London terror attacks in 2005– had been managed.

He has been with Alice’s devastated family, vowing to get to the truth over the investigation as it emerged Met officers had apparently been seen searching part of the same park, which spans an area of around 25 football pitches, more than a week ago.

But a shopkeeper said officers had TWICE visited his store near the park in mid September to ask him about convicted wife killer Zalkalns.

(Image: PA)

He said police took away the shop’s CCTV footage after he told them he had been in the shop around the time Alice disappeared on August 28.

Her body was discovered on September 30 wrapped in plastic and submerged in the Brent River near where she was last seen alive on a towpath on her way home to Hanwell in West London.

The park where Zalkalns – who went missing on September 3 - was found is only half a mile from one of his previous homes, where a bike believed to belong to him was retrieved last month.

Just hours before the body find was announced a shopkeeper had exclusively told how he had seen Zalkalns apparently living rough around the time Alice went missing.

Shopkeeper Fereydoon Alavi told how he had seen a dishevelled Zalkalns enter his off-licence with a mystery teenage boy around the day Alice vanished.

Fereydoon, a dad in his 50s, was interviewed twice by police officers and had CCTV footage taken from his shop after seeing Zalkalns on or around August 28, the Alice disappeareed.

The store boss, who had a Find Alice poster outside his shop, said of Zalklans: “He seemed out of it, he could have been on some sort of drug.

“I thought the whole thing was suspicious. Zalkalns was unshaven, he had a grey jumper on and he looked really scruffy. He was smelly too."

The storekeeper said in mid-September a female police officer showed him a picture of Zalklans, which he positively identified.

The store is little more than half a mile from the flat Zalkalns shared with his Czech partner Katerina Laiblova, 39, and their one-year-old daughter.

Freddy said police twice visited his shop and sent an engineer to recover CCTV footage.

Scotland Yard has refused to discuss Freddy’s sighting, or the teenage boy said to have accompanied Zalkalns.

Alice was last seen on close circuit TV walking along the towpath beside the Grand Union Canal near her home on the afternoon of August 28.

Nearly three weeks later investigators realised that Zalkalns, who was reported missing by his family on September 5, had been cycling behind her.

He served seven years in prison in his native country for bludgeoning and stabbing his wife Rudite to death.

The general labourer, who worked at a building site in Isleworth, west London, is believed to have come to the UK in 2007, but authorities here are thought to have had no record of his murder conviction.

David Cameron has said he will examine “all the circumstances of the case” surrounding the murder of Alice, whose body was recovered on Tuesday.

(Image: PA)

The Prime Minister has described it as a “horrific case”, and said: “Anyone with a daughter will have just felt sickened by what has happened and what that poor family has had to go through.”

The post-mortem on Alice's at Uxbridge mortuary took two days due to the “complex nature” of the investigation, Scotland Yard said.

Julian Bell, leader of Ealing Council, said talks would be held with the family at a later stage over the prospect of a permanent memorial.

Hundreds of messages were added to a book of condolence set up in Ealing town hall.

Mr added people “queued out the door” at one stage as they waited patiently in line to pay their respects.

The book will eventually be passed on to Alice’s family, while flags in the area were also flown at half-mast as a mark of respect.

Alice’s parents, Rosalind Hodgkiss and Jose Gross, said in a statement: “We have been left completely devastated by the recent developments and it is difficult to comprehend that our sweet and beautiful daughter was the victim of a terrible crime.

“Why anyone would want to hurt her is something that we are struggling to come to terms with.”

The Metropolitan Police have come under fire for delays in identifying Zalkalns as a suspect, and were not able to apply for a European Arrest Warrant due to lack of evidence.

A bicycle belonging to the suspect was traced by officers at a former address linked to the Latvian on September 19 in Boston Manor Park Road - closer to where his body lay undisturbed.

The mother of Arnis Zalkalns’s daughters in Latvia believed he was dead soon after Alice went missing.

His former partner Liga Rubezniece, with whom he has two daughters, would receive regular phone calls, texts and money from him.

(Image: Getty)

She said she last had a text from him on August 29, the day after Alice disappeared before vanishing himself on September 3rd.

Gunta Meiere said her daughter has spoken to the police about Zalkalns and that she was “in shock” over his connection with the Alice case.

Zalkans’ former landlord Rado Andric, 64, said: “This park is like his escape in my opinion, his escape from society. That’s why he used to ride his bike, he used to go there to pick berries to make sloe gin.